I see it all the time. I even take advantage of it. Some businesses have too many discount sales and special offers – in fact it can seem like a permanent sale. I call this the DFS effect
But what happens? – no one buys at full price.
Now it is of course very tempting to drop your price when you have stock to move, and of course I am not suggesting that you don’t ever have sales, just don’t have them all the time.
I was recently invited by Andy Hayes of Travel Online Partners to be a guest on his TOP radio show. Being someone who loves talking (!), of course I said “yes”.
Selling online can be as straightforward as adding a PayPal button to your website, but if you’re looking to manage a full catalogue you really need something more sophisticated.
Running an online shop can mean your market instantly grows to be worldwide and your shop open 24/7. Because it’s now ‘Open All Hours‘ you should make sure your ecommerce store is:
clearly laid out
can handle multiple transactions
manage stock levels dynamically (so you’re never selling what you don’t have!)
have a secure payment process (security set-up so buyers are confident ordering from you)
good SEO for both your shop pages and individual products
ability to handle discounts, special offers and vouchers
clear photos and images with zoom options
Here’s what I have to say about Venda, and the reasons I think it’s ideal for small businesses looking for a professional ecommerce solution. While Venda takes care of your shop, we make the shop look good!
There are lots of things to consider from a practical and ‘process’ point of view when setting up an ecommerce store, and we use Venda as it’s already thought of them all! I am big fan of the business philosophy ’stick to your knitting’ – which for us means we stick to the design and marketing aspects of a website, and not the coding. Building an ecommerce store from scratch is not a simple job, and is also likely to cost you quite a few £££ if you’re looking for something even slightly complex.
To use another cliche, there is also little point in re-inventing the wheel either (especially at your own expense) when it comes to selling online. It makes sense to take advantage of development that has already been proven and tested and launch your ecommerce store on the back of that. This is why we use Venda.
Venda SBS is a subscription based ecommerce ‘content management system’ which allows you to update your online store just by accessing the site online. It costs just £49.99 a month for hosting, support and access to the ecommerce platform. To make your Venda site look good – we offer a custom design service.
By Lucy
Talking your customer’s language – my advice on video!
The really helpful Your Business Channel is packed with videos and shows to watch online, that have an incredible range of advice and tips for business owners from a huge range of experts (lots of which are quite famous) – and now me too!
Sometimes I come across businesses, and business people, that just don’t seem to have any manners!
Now, maybe you subscribe to the ‘Alan Sugar’ point-and-shout school of management (actually, I quite like his approach to delegating, as he always sends his assistants out on all the ‘Apprentice’ errands, and just keeps the good ‘you’re fired!’ stuff for himself). But being aggressive or rude in business can often cost you money.
If we look into the customer service side of things, then it’s a well known fact that a ‘bad story’ can escalate and get much further reach than a ‘good news’ story: “Airlines getting luggage to passengers every time”… ever read that headline? But “mountains of suitcases at Terminal 5” when it opened — days’ worth of headlines!
So you need to remember what you do and say as a business, or as a person representing your business, can make a big difference to your sales and profits.
But it’s not just customer service; you should also be thinking about how you work with other businesses too.
One of the best ways to promote your business is to set up a Joint Venture with other businesses that complement what you do. If you’re an Accountant specialising in small businesses, for example, you could set up joint ventures with solicitors, or HR advisors, or marketing firms. A joint venture as a ‘host recipient‘ arrangement will mean you can each promote your services to the other company’s client list, introducing them as a partner you have chosen to work with can offer a valuable service that you endorse. This is always a powerful ‘introduction’ to new prospects for your business from a source they already trust and buy from.
And don’t be rude to your competition either — they may be able to help you. Some of your competitors won’t compete with you in every part of your market place, and could be a source of leads for you. Approach some of your competitors and ask if they have names on their database that they have just not been able to sell any services to ever — offer them a deal in that you mail their list, and anything you sell to that list then they can receive a commission. This is a win-win situation, as they are getting revenue where they have not been able to get it before, and you are getting new customers.
Or get together with your competitors to promote your industry or market. You might get more PR and Marketing impact for your products and services as an ‘organisation’ or ‘industry body’ than individually. Of course, there will be things you will not want to share, but if you can collectively raise the profile of the products or services, you sell then you should all benefit from the increased awareness and demand.
And another thing I believe: don’t be worried about your competition — just be different. There will be something that you can do better, cheaper, faster, more knowledgeably, more convienently, smarter, brighter (or whatever the difference) than your competitors can. This is your USP. This is what you always promote.
Everyone who buys your product or service has their own agenda — they want ‘their problem’ solved, or ‘their need’ satisfied.
Now don’t panic, this doesn’t mean you need a different product or service for every single person in the world but it does explain why customer segmentation is so important if you want to sell more to your best customers.
Once you know who your best customers are, you can put them into ’segments’ and market to them separately. The theory behind customer segmentation is that not all customers want the same product or service at the same price at the same time.
So once you have looked at who your ‘best customers’ are, segmenting them into groups, you can identify who spends what and when, and design new products, services and marketing campaigns to get them buying more.
Unless you do have just one product or service that’s suited for just one type of customer, you cannot have a one-size-fits-all message in your Marketing.
So how do you research your customer segments?
If you have customer relationship management software (CRM), use the data that gives you to look at past purchases to identify trends. If this data isn’t available, you will need to survey your best customers to find out why they buy from you. You can also look at independent market research on your target markets to get more insight.
When you understand the customer ’segments’ that are best for your business, you can plan your marketing around where these types of customers will see and respond to your messages. You can also develop new products (or repackage existing ones) to suit different the different ‘best customer’ segments you have.
A business coach, for example, has one core service, but customer segmentation might identify one or several ‘best customer’ audiences they have e.g. design companies, start-ups or health professionals. By changing the look of adverts and where they advertise, the business coach can position themselves as an expert rather than a ‘general practitioner’, and are likely to get more customers as a result.
And customer segmentation doesn’t need to mean you have to multiply the amount of marketing budget you have by the number segments you want to focus on. Email is a very cheap and effective way to target different market segments with different messages. Another low cost way of reaching your segmented target markets is having one-page ‘landing page’ web sites with specific offers tailored to each segment of your ideal customer base.
…and don’t forget your web site
Update your existing web site to reflect the customer segments you want to focus on. If you currently promote the business as offering one product or service that ‘fits-all’, split your home page into different sections. If you are targeting business buyers, this might be clearly signposting different sizes of businesses (e.g. SME, International). If you are you targeting different types of consumers then have clear destinations for different ages, or price ranges, for example. Signpost your segments on your web site so that visitors know which information is for them.
Start with a key ‘best customer’ segment you’ve identified, focus on getting the messages right for this market, then move on to add more and more of your ‘best customers’ to your Marketing plan. The more you segment and focus, the more likely you’ll be getting on everyone’s agenda and selling more.
This is a really important exercise to undertake. Your perfect customer ideally is already your most profitable ‘best customer’(s), but it might not be…
Make a list — what are all the attributes of your perfect customer?
Answer all these questions (and more that are relevant to you as a business owner, and your business):
What are your perfect customer’s likes and dislikes?
What is your perfect customer’s budget ?
How does your perfect customer define ‘Value for Money’?
What level of service does your perfect customer expect?
How often does your perfect customer buy the product or service you sell?
How does your perfect customer use your product or service?
Where else/who else do your perfect customers buy from?
How do your perfect customers like buy?
If consumers: what ‘demographic’ are your perfect customers? (age, interests, family status etc)
If businesses: what ‘vertical’, ’size’ or ‘type’ of business are your ideal customers?
What other things does your perfect customer spend their budget on (this is a very relevant question, as this identifies competition for you. Remember your competition might not be an alternative supplier of what you sell, but something else they spend money on… )
What description would you give your perfect customers? You can write a couple of lines or more for this.
And now you can see if your perfect customer ‘looks like’ your best customers.
If they do — great! You know what to do now — get marketing to them!
If they don’t, then you need to make a decision: can you package your existing products and services to appeal to your perfect customer(s)? Or do you need to find something new to sell them?
Your perfect customers exist — you just need to have what they want, and tell them about it.
Now, while I do believe it’s true that all men (and women) were created equal, in business it’s very important to remember that not all customers are created equal.
Let me explain…
What I am talking about here is customer segmentation, and identifying the ‘best’ customers for your business.
The old Pareto Effect (80:20 rule) comes into play very often when analysing customers — where it’s typical to find 80% of your profit coming from 20% of your customers. This is WHY all customers are not created equal — some of them make you a lot more profit!
When I work with business owners on their Marketing, it’s a typical request to be asked to “get more customers” for the business, to which I always reply, “no, you want to get more of the RIGHT customers“. Sometimes this is a bit of a revelation (and a d’oh moment!). But as soon as you know in business who your ‘best’ customers are, you can start to be strategic in your Marketing (and usually by ‘best’ we’re talking most profitable customers — but it can be other measures).
Before I make business owners work out their most profitable customers, I always remind them to look at this over TIME. It is the LIFETIME VALUE of customers that is important in analysing your customer base i.e. how much revenue and profit you will make from a customer over the lifetime that they buy from you, and not just the first or one-off purchase that they make.
It’s not uncommon for a customer to ‘try’ a new supplier with a small transaction to help establish trust and a relationship that then, over time, can lead to more, and increasingly higher revenue or more profitable purchases. This is accepted buying behaviour which you need to understand.
There’s a great article on Lifetime Value here from the expert business Marketer Paul Gorman.
So once you’ve found out who your best customers are, what do you do?
Easy — you find more of them. It’s as simple as that. You know who they are, you know what they buy, how they buy, what they pay — now find more of them. And if you don’t know the answers to these questions, now is the time to ask your customers and find out the answers.
Remember you don’t just want ‘more customers’, you want more of your ‘best customers’.
Yes, that old chestnut — the title of a thousand spam emails!
But don’t worry, this isn’t another ‘get rich quick even without a computer’ email (I never understand those — how do you make money on the internet not being on the internet?! I digress…)
Back to the subject in hand: how DO you make MONEY from your web site? Or how I like to think about it: how can your web site make your business more successful?
Well, I am not going to list everything you can do here in detail, but if you boil it down, it’s essentially about getting a few key things right.
You need to:
get the RIGHT traffic to your web site i.e. the type of visitor you want who is looking for, and willing to pay for, what you are selling
get the VOLUME of traffic you need to make your business profitable
offer what your visitors want to buy (and try and capture the details of everyone who is a potential customer)
sell or ‘convert’ as many of your web site visitors as possible
If you are making the effort to maximise all these things then that is how you make money from your Web site.
But how do you do this?
Well, you need to look at lots of different ways of promoting your web site, including online and offline ads, email marketing, SEO (Search Engine Optimisation), to make sure you’re found on searches, get online PR working for you with articles, list yourself in good directories, use social networking to drive traffic, and set up PPC advertising (like Google Adwords) to guarantee you are found in search engines.
You need to work really hard on testing your web site and its content for optimal conversions. Look hard at your stats, and work out why people are visiting your site, and what they are looking at. How many visitors leave without buying, or at least telling you who they are? Don’t underestimate the power of changing the detail on your web site. Even just swapping around your layout on pages can make a HUGE difference to conversion (which you can set up so it’s automatical, making it even easier, with a free tool called Google Optimizer)
So, the 2 things you must be thinking about ALL the time are:
How can I get more ‘qualified’ traffic to my site (not just numbers, but real, targeted, ready-to-buy traffic)?
How can I get as many of my visitors on the site to buy, or sign up to my database, while they are there?
That’s it, in a nutshell! But of course, you will want to know HOW to do this. And you want tried and tested methods…
So let me introduce my friend Ed Rivis, who is an expert on Internet Marketing. Ed has today released the first UK-focused monthly internet marketing newsletter(as opposed to US-focused, as a lot of internet marketing ideas are). He’s offering the first copy to everyone for FREE (including free postage — you really do pay nothing) just by signing up here…
I can’t wait for the postman to arrive with my copy, as I know it will be PACKED with real, useful web marketing ideas to help me make money from my web sites.
And none of Ed’s ideas are ‘tricks’, by the way. They are straightforward, tried out and tested (a lot) ‘how to’ articles about internet marketing that works. I’d order your free copy today if you’re really serious about making money from your web site. You’ll be increasing your profits before you can say ‘highly-targeted Landing Page’.
I was recently invited by Andy Hayes of Travel Online Partners to be a guest on his TOP radio show. Being someone who loves talking (!), of course I said “yes”.
I do like Twitter and what it can do for my business. Twitter is huge and growing every day — there’s a lot of people to Tweet to.
